Too Many House Projects

Thursday, February 16, 2012

We actually "finished" this room last January, a week and a half before my 3rd son was born and here it is a year later and I am finally getting around to blogging about it. Here are some before pictures, the first one my oldest son took when he was about 4 (he ran around and took pictures of random rooms in our house). Thankfully he did because it is the best "before" picture I have!

This was our rarely used guest bedroom, the furniture is all from my childhood bedroom. When we found out we were expecting baby boy #3, we sold the bed on Craigslist and gave the desk and dresser to my mom. This furniture was very feminine and I knew it wouldn't be used in a house full of boys. Plus it wasn't really my style anymore, it just furnished this room for awhile for free! Here is another picture that I have from a different view (excuse my boys finding their Easter gifts in here).

We were moving our middle son, Bryson, into this room so that we could get the nursery ready for baby. I had big plans for a nautical room. I have always loved the nautical look and both of my first two sons had nautical nurseries as well. It started in high school when I copied a lighthouse painting by Edward Hopper, soon everyone was giving me lighthouses and other nautical things. For this room I took inspiration from Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware and some of my own ideas as well.

We built our own window seat. There is storage under the seat, which lifts up on toy box hinges (so they lower slowly so as to not squish little fingers). I still want to make cushions for the top of the window seat, find some hardware for the drawers and cupboards, and possibly hang lights on the side of the bookshelves as well. Since this picture was taken we have added white 2 inch wood blinds for privacy. I will share how we built this bookshelf/window seat in another post.

The flags, nautical pillows on the window seat and bedding are all from Land of Nod. The area rug I found at BigLots several years ago.

The stripes are navy blue and white even though in some pictures they look black. Navy blue is hard to photograph! I did a board and batten treatment along the lower half of the wall and painted it a glossy white.

We bought the boat bed, dresser and nightstand on Craigslist for $700. It was in perfect shape and I was so ecstatic when we found it! The buoy above his bed is from Pottery Barn Kids. On the wall behind the bed I nailed in strips of cut mdf in a square grid and painted it all a light blue which ties into the light blue in the bedding. We used the same blue on the back of the bookshelves. Then I hung brackets and installed the shelf above the bed. This room has lots of storage and display areas now, I can just see all of my son's sports trophies lined up there someday.

Some detailed shots of the bookshelves. We drilled a hole in the back of these shelves so we could run extension cords or lamp cords (inside the cupboards there is access to 1 outlet on each side). I had 3 different lighthouse lamps that we plugged in and they look so nice at night shining. (I got this idea from Thrifty Decor Chick as well as other ideas for the bookshelves).

The dresser looks very off-center in this picture! It needed to be placed there to allow room for the door to open. Bryson's wooden fire station is now on the floor to the left of the dresser.

My dad gave Bryson this sailboat as a gift for moving into his new big boy room! The little AHOY buoy frame has a picture of him when he was just 17 months in Hawaii. The lighthouse opens up and has hooks on the inside (which I assume is for keys). Bryson LOVES hiding little treasures of his in there.

This is a picture of the other side of the room, the left door goes out into the hall and the right door is his {small} walk-in closet. The lamp on the nightstand is a lighthouse that I made in woodshop in highschool. I used a lathe and made three different lighthouse lamps, each of my parents have {a slightly different} one as well.

Friday, December 30, 2011

I have had a {private} family blog since June of 2008, but I wanted to start a separate {public} blog about my house, because as my husband always tells me I have "too many house projects" going on around here!